The Marriage-Go-Round

Andrew Cherlin has a new book out entitled "The Marriage-Go-Round" that looks at the state of marriage and the family in America today and in the process explodes the myths put out by the Christianists and anti-gay marriage crowd. What is particularly humorous is that many of the European countries so frequently derided by the far right in fact have much more stability than in the USA. Likewise, the turbulence in straight marriages has NOTHING to do with same-sex marriage. Common sense would tell us many of these things, but it is nice to have yet another researched effort that further delineate the lies of those who spread the myth that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation." On marriage, like so much else, our foes are lying and disseminating false information. Here are some high lights of an interview with Cherlin:

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I had the sense that American marriage and family life differed fundamentally from the other Western countries—Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand . . . . We have more marriages and remarriages, more divorces, and more short-term cohabiting (living together) relationships than the other countries. Put them together and you have more turnover, more movement in and out of relationships than anywhere else. As a result, Americans have more spouses and live-in partners over the course of their lives than do people in any other Western country. We step on and off the carousel of marriages and partnerships faster than anywhere else.

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One statistic that stunned me: take two children, one growing up with married parents in the United States, and one growing up with unmarried parents in Sweden—which child has the higher likelihood of seeing his parents’ relationship break up? Answer: the American kid, because children living with married parents in the United States have a higher probability of experiencing a break-up than do children living with unmarried parents in Sweden. That’s how high our break-up rates are.

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American children face much more movement of parents and parent-figures in and out of their households than do children anywhere else. Take children who see three different fathers, stepfathers, and/or mother’s boyfriends in their homes by the time they are fifteen. The percentage of American children who live with that many partners is 8 percent, which is three times as high as the next highest country (Sweden at 2.6 percent). In Canada and many European countries, less than 1 percent of children experience that much family turnover.

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[C]hildren living with remarried parents do not have a higher level of well-being than do children in single-parent families, despite the presence of a second adult.

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Same-sex marriage has been more of a battleground in the United States than in most other countries because marriage is more important to Americans than to people in other countries. . . . . In some European countries, gay and lesbian activists are asking instead: why, at this late date, should we buy into the oppressive, archaic institution of marriage?

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And as I have pointed out a number of times in the past, who pray tell has the highest divorce rate in the USA? You guessed it: the evangelical Christians who so vehemently oppose legal rights for LGBT couples. It seems Maggie Gallagher needs to be focusing her efforts somewhere other than on gay marriage if she truly cares about "preserving" marriage.